Healthy Diet and Ultra Processed Foods

Good morning everyone,

Along with the many po-faced and frankly taxing recommendations for good health, there is another, less difficult route to having a better day.

A daily visit to the Best Jokes thread on this forum is really worthwhile - there are some beauties this morning!

Best wishes,

Brian D.

Good grief no, I found that thread monotonous. I received a forum suspension many years ago because one member took great offence… get this: he saw the joke but thought it was a news item. He threw a truckload of personal abuse at me as well, once he realised he was in the wrong. Perhaps these days I’d have reported his abuse to the authorities, it was that bad.

Upshot: I’ve kept away. I think I’ve peeped in there once or twice in the last ten years, and didn’t find anything to even raise half a smirk. So that was that.

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Agree 100%. I do 90-minute Ashtanga yoga sessions most days. Possibly not for everyone, but if I play music immediately afterwards, my system sounds better than usual – at least equivalent to a black box upgrade!

There are some good jokes today. They must be good, my daughter thought most were terrible!

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There are differing views on this. There are doctors that claim you can get all the protein you need from plants and there are doctors that claim you need some animal protein in your diet. Both groups have some studies to point to. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all option and I think what you need will likely reflect your genetic history. I know I was losing muscle mass and getting injured a lot when I was eating all plant based. Since I’ve added some nonfat greek yogurt, eggs, and cottage cheese to my diet, I’ve stopped getting injured, and gained strength and lean muscle mass back. In my 50s. Factory farming in the US is abhorrent and I’m morally opposed to it and think most people could eat a lot less meat and dairy to their health benefit as well as to the environment’s. I source my eggs and dairy from small(er) farms that employ ethical practices though I haven’t visited these farms and have to take their word for it and hope regulators are doing their jobs. My meals are focused around the plants and the protein is just the accompaniment.

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@Nick1940 thank you for sharing, and I wish you many more years of enjoyment and eating what you like. I do tend to agree that we benefit from genetics and we are more prone to certain conditions that run the family. For myself I am very mindful of good heart health and also inflammatory conditions as there is family history of both, but easily managed if mindful of it.

Best wishes!

Kimchi. Kombucha. Sauerkraut, kefir and other fermented foods that have been touted to be especially beneficial are now classed as an Ultra Processed Food.

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We do exactly the same thing!

The thread title refers to “diet” and “foods” as they relate to health but I think it has more to do with lifestyle than foods/diet alone.
I stopped eating rice, bread, pasta, potatoes and other starchy foods more than 35 years ago and have been on a low carb plant based diet since then. I do eat some meat - usually chicken or fish. But the change in my eating habits was also accompanied by other changes like increasing the amount of exercise I did, sleeping more, and cooking my food and not going out to eat at restaurants.
I am now 71 and managed to keep my weight stable all those years and still weigh the same as when I was in my early twenties. I do a lot of strength/resistance training at the gym. Bad knee prevents me from doing some cardio exercises like running and so cycle when I can or take a brisk walk every day. Some friends can’t understand how I can just eat a lot of vegetables but they forget that is a 35+ years lifestyle.

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While painting some walls today, listening to Heart 70s, there was mention in the news of a Swedish study that found…

Higher levels of total cholesterol and iron and lower levels of glucose, creatinine, uric acid, aspartate aminotransferase, gamma-glutamyl transferase, alkaline phosphatase, lactate dehydrogenase, and total iron-binding capacity were associated with reaching 100 years.

Implication is that if your Total Cholesterol is high, and you’re prescribed Statins to lower it, they may reduce your chance of living to 100?

Did a Google and found the full paper here.

Willy.

Some of the ultra-processed food warnings have come from Prof. Tim Spector, who’s associated with the ZOE programme. Clever bloke.

Mrs AM has signed up to the Zoe app where you eat special biscuits and set meals, do tests, wear a blood sugar monitor for a fortnight etc. The idea being you work out how your body reacts to certain food types and combinations. Do you have a sensitivity to carbs that cause weight gain or perhaps headaches etc ?

The results are eagerly awaited here. But I can tell you now that beer causes me weight gain. So that’s my £250 saved !

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The ZOE programme is very interesting if you don’t have any pre-existing metabolic conditions as the use of a continuous glucose monitor they may supply can give profound insight into your body’s handling of carbs. I have a colleague who signed up and found completely unexpectedly his blood sugar control was awful when he ate certain things. A real wake up call for him.

I have diabetes, and I’ve purchased CGMs privately for a few months as I’m not eligible on the NHS, and the results/trends to say the least are far from intuitive, especially when it comes to exercise.

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Just over a year ago i made a change to my diet, stopped eating high sugar content stuff.
I was experiencing a lot of stiffness in the knee joints, and also in the feet, however after cutting out most of the sugar from my diet this stiffness disappeared completely. I still consume some sugar (difficult to avoid it completely) but easy to cut out the unnecessary bulk of it.

The cutting out of sweets, cake, biscuits, honey, jam, and some sauces which contain sugar, plus cutting down on bread and potatoes. Oddly my sugar intake was not particularly high, never been one for sugary-fizzy drinks or sugar in my coffee, but it’s just shocking how much sugar is used in processed foods these days.

My daily chocolate ration still exists to prevent the onset of madness, but the brand has changed from the cheapo supermarket plain chocolate with 50% coco solids and a whopping 49% sugar, to Green & Blacks organic 85% coco with a daily portion 18gm which has only 2.6gm of cane sugar.

<<>>

Another very healthy diet habit i’ve adopted over the past year is a glass of OSU Apple Cider Vinegar, i like to add the juice of a squeezed lemon, and top up with carbonated water.
Just the job after a bike ride :stuck_out_tongue: :beer:

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Some may find this piece in today’s Guardian interesting.

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Only 1:7!?

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In general, I don’t seem to have an addictive personality - I’ve tried smoking and other substances without ever feeling any desire to continue, and I give up booze quite easily every Lent. But giving up a single sugar in coffee in my thirties was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Mark

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I have grave concerns about the overall food chain… after being very ill for 10 years…I discovered I was gluten intollerant… this was the tip of the iceberg… I used to wake up in the morning - exhausted every meal would give me blinding headaces… My doctor was useless - as I did not fall into the easy to diagnose catagories. My illness finally culminated in terrable inflamation and arthritus… Wheat has been dramtically hybradised for yield only…and bugger digestion. Sugar is a another grave issue… I have had to do 18 hour fasting and try and avoid obvious sugar where I can …The result has been dramatic…20lbs weight loss, I now have energy, I feel great in the morning and aches and pains 95% gone. I look round now at people and what they are eating…I think we are heading for really quite big issues across the poulation. I have a big thankyou … for Dr Berg - (google him) he really helped me understand what was going on.

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Gluten is a protein in wheat - it isn’t a particular feature of Ultra-processed food, indeed a more ‘Paleo’ diet with bread as a feature would be no better. Even Spelt has a fair amount of Gluten…

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Well you are right gluten is in wheat…but the hybradised wheat has higher concentrations…which the food industry loves…for making bread… This combined with the pest resistance…makes digesting it more difficult. More and more people are becoming intollerant…look at the supermarkets there are aisles for gluten free…As a farmer once said to me many years ago…if its good enough for the bugs its good enough for me…

I concur, as a teenager my regular 3 spoons of sugar in a mug of coffee came to an end at 18 years old. However, after the following few months of drinking coffee without sugar i came to the realisation how awful it tasted with sugar when i mistakenly took a sip from the wrong cup.

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